1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to packet processing, and more specifically, to a system and method for assigning multiple loss and service priorities to data packets.
2. Related Art
Computer networks such as LANs (local area networks) and WANs (wide area networks) have become commonplace in contemporary business and industry. Such networks allow communications between computers at various locations. For example, computer networks are used to allow communications among several computers in an office, within a city, or even across several continents.
To most efficiently accommodate the dynamics of computer communications traffic, networks are implemented using packet switching technology. In a packet switched network, data are encapsulated into a packet at the source node and the packet is transmitted across the network to the destination node. Because a packet switched network does not have dedicated physical channels, packet communications provides the efficiency of shared bandwidth.
The application of packet communications is not limited to sharing of computer data among computers. For example, one network, the broadband integrated services digital network (BISDN), has evolved to allow packet communications techniques to provide voice video teleconferencing over a packet switched network.
Packet switching is an ideal way to optimize the use of available bandwidth of a communications network. However, when traffic grows to high levels, network congestion can occur. When such congestion occurs data are delayed and some packets can even be lost, never reaching their intended destination.